


A Question of Justice

by meyghasa



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: AU, Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-27
Updated: 2011-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-26 14:40:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/284462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meyghasa/pseuds/meyghasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In modern day America, Andrew and Marian are a couple of college students with a vision.  DA2 AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Question of Justice

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the incredible [we grew under a bad sun](http://bluewickedbehemoth.deviantart.com/art/we-grew-under-a-bad-sun-253664018) by [bluewickedbehemoth](http://bluewickedbehemoth.deviantart.com/).

They met in freshman year of college.  The college was on the east coast, _one of those hippy liberal arts schools_ , as her dad had always put it.

“You’re probably going to major in philosophy too, aren’t you?” he had said.  She knew that he was pulling the card she hated, that _I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did_ card that so many well-meaning parents played.  Her dad _had_ been a hippy, back in the late sixties when basically everyone was doing it so why shouldn’t he.  And he had studied philosophy and done a lot of drugs and married mom and had three kids and then, ultimately, died before she even left for school.  In a way, Marian thought it was better that way.  At least he didn’t have to see her living the dream and majoring in philosophy.

So that was where she met him.  8:00 a.m. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Intro to Philosophy.  It would have been brutal with any professor but Wynne—Wynne, a willowy older woman with a pristine bun who insisted all the students call her by her first name.  On nicer days – rare in the fading autumn, but often enough that it was officially A Thing – she let them sit outside under the big oak trees.  She wouldn’t let them smoke, which was a shame.  Talking about existentialism made Marian’s lungs itch for nicotine.  She figured it was ingrained in her from late nights in her senior year of high school, when she and her small group of cohorts would huddle around the slit of a basement window smoking cigarettes and talking about life and praying her mom didn’t catch them.

His name was Andrew something.  Something unpronounceable that sounded vaguely Polish.  She called him Andrew exactly once before deciding it sounded too poncy and henceforth calling him Andy.  He was majoring in Russian Literature, and a part of her was amused at what seemed to be an even more useless potential degree than her own.  She liked the way he dressed: worn jeans, or sometimes khakis, fluffy sweaters with sleeves that were a little too long, hemp necklace.

And he was good looking, she had to give him that.  Blond hair pulled up in a silly half ponytail, the rest left to hang messily across the back of his neck.  Scruffy, unshaven chin and cheeks.  The most expressive damn eyebrows she had ever, ever seen.  Then, to top it all off, these incredible brown eyes that were almost light enough to be called caramel if she was feeling particularly poetic.  He was bordering on scrawny, like he didn’t quite eat enough, but he was tall.  Taller than her, anyway, by a handful of inches.  She liked that.

It was the cat hair that made her talk to him at first.  He had been wearing a black hoodie, and the class was scattered across the lawn while Wynne talked about Plato.  She was lounging against a leafless oak, one leg bent to support the notebook covered in scribbles, and he was about a foot away, sitting cross-legged and leaning forward with an arm propped on his thigh.  

“You’re covered in cat hair,” she had said.  Not the wittiest of openers, but it had gotten his attention.

It didn’t take long for them to become virtually inseparable.  For three years she spent most of her time on the roof adjoining the tiny attic room of the house he shared with five other college guys.  The room itself was too messy for her tastes and smelled overwhelmingly like boy and cat.  She was a dog person, but she managed.  Pounce – she refused to call him Sir Pounce-a-lot, no matter how Andy badgered her – left her alone regardless, ignoring her with a haughty look and arched back.  Whatever.  Cats weren’t _real_ pets anyway.

—-

Templeton’s Pharmaceuticals, he told her, had a headquarters only about an hour drive from their little college town.  “So what?” she said.  “What do you care about a no-name pharmaceutical company?”

His eyes darkened and he looked away.  “You don’t know, do you?  I always forget you’re from down south.”

“My _southernness_ aside,” she drawled, “no, I guess I don’t know.  I heard they’re working on some drug for depression or something.  You  mean that?”

“Ha!  Depression,” he spat, gesturing with air quotes.  “It’s a pretty excuse for what they’re doing.  After all, there are thousands of people with mental illness across the world, right?  Costing billions of dollars to keep healthy enough to work and be contributing members of society?  Who wouldn’t want a solution?”

She looked at him blankly, expecting him to continue, but he was looking at her expectantly like he wanted an answer.  An assurance.  “Well, yeah,” she eventually agreed.  “I mean, it hit my dad pretty hard.  Mom still wonders if Bethany is going to end up—“

Andy cut her off with a sharp wave of his hand.  He was pacing now, arms waving as he spoke, eyes flashing with anger.  “And you would let them drug up your baby sister?  Maybe lock her away to see—“

It was her turn to cut him off.  “Andy.  You can’t _seriously_ be telling me that it’s better to stop researching treatments.  I refuse to believe you  would wish a life like that on anybody.”

“It’s all a cover,” he said, coming to a stop and looking her in the eye.  She had never seen him look so intense.  “They aren’t doing studies on lab rats, Marian.  They’re concocting all this shit that they inject into people.  They have a whole building full of “case studies,” poor fools who sign up thinking they’re getting a free cure when all they’re getting is their brain wiped clean for god knows what purpose.  And the people who work there?  The researchers and scientists and interns and _janitors_?  They have to sign a waiver that they won’t tell anybody what’s going on.  It’s disgusting, and it’s spreading.  They already have six places down the east coast.  They’re looking to expand their _treatment facilities_ all over the country once they get the funding.”

“Wait a second.  How do you know all this?  A company is what, making brainless slaves for nefarious purposes?  Come on, Andy.  You have to admit it sounds… awfully farfetched.”

He turned from her, his head drooping.  “I have a friend.  Karl.  He got an internship there over the summer, and in August he wrote me, secretly, to tell me they weren’t letting him go.  He could only give me hints about what was going on in there.  He said it’s like a prison, worse than a prison, and even people who exhibit the faintest signs are being put into the ‘program.’

“Look, I know it sounds crazy.  But I trust Karl.  I’ve known him since we were kids.  He wouldn’t lie about this.”  He turned around, meeting her eyes again.  “He wrote me again last week.  He asked me to come see him there.  I… I want you to come with me.  Please?”

“Andy—“

“Please?”

She sighed.  “Fine.”

—-

They went that night, driving along winding back roads lined with a dense forest of skeletal trees and heavy underbrush.  After parking the car about a mile from the facility, they hiked the rest of the way to avoid detection.  The designated meeting place was a small clearing just south of the main building, out of sight of the patrolling spotlights and – oddly, Marian thought – high fence that surrounded the cluster of buildings.

Karl was already there, his back turned to them as they crept into the clearing.  She heard Andy’s exhale of relief as he hurried forward.  “Oh Karl, thank God, I was worried something had happ—“

Karl turned, and the unnaturally blank look in his eyes sent a jolt of fear into Marian’s stomach.  Andy skidded to a halt, his eyebrows knitting and his mouth open in a little ‘o’ of dismay.  “No,” he whispered.  “Karl, no…”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” Karl said in a monotone.  “Now, everything is so clear.  So clear, Andrew.  You’ll understand.”  The crunch of footsteps echoed in the clearing and Marian could see the outlines of figures in black approaching from behind Karl.

“Oh, shit,” she said before grabbing Andy’s hand and making a run for it.

They crashed through the undergrowth like the hounds of hell were at their heels.  Marian refused to let go of Andy’s hand, refused to leave him behind even over his protesting shouts of, “No, Karl, no!”  _Just keep running_ , she thought.  _Don’t stop.  Don’t ever stop._ Somehow, miraculously, saved by God with a big G, they made it to the car without being caught, and Marian drove out of there with a screeching of wheels.

Half an hour later, Andy was in shock, and Marian was pissed.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.  This is _not_ what I signed up for, Andy.  Jesus!  What if they find us?  What if they come and find us and take us away or arrest us or god knows what!  Jesus!”  She was gripping the steering wheel hard enough that her fingers ached, knuckles white and pronounced.  Her stomach was rolling unpleasantly.  But no matter how much she raved, Andy sat silent, staring out the window, and the angle was such that she couldn’t see the tears running down his cheeks.

—-

For weeks afterward, Marian and Andy barely saw each other.  Marian threw herself into other, completely benign, pursuits.  She was getting a lot of notice for the articles she kept contributing to the literary journal, and it wasn’t the kind of notice that kept her awake at night wondering if men in black were coming to get her.  That was good.

Meanwhile, Andy was spending most of his time spreading discord across campus about Templeton’s, and that wasn’t good.

She heard from a friend about the petition they were going to send to anyone and everyone in the government who would listen.  That originally had been the reason she was coming to see him.  Not at all because she missed him, or wanted to protect him, or wanted him to just shut up and listen for once.

Well, maybe that last one.

Upon arriving at the house he shared, one of his roommates had explained that he was out with a couple of guys putting up a billboard.

“A billboard?” she asked.

“Yeah.  It was awful.  Gives PETA a run for their money for sure, showing dead guys and some little coked up kid or something.  I think he’s gone off the deep end.”

So she waited, sitting on the roof chain smoking, until he got home.  He was covered in paint and looked surprised to see her.  They ended up standing in his tiny attic room and shouting, back and forth, until she couldn’t take his sanctimonious bullshit one second longer.

“Don’t you know that shock value shit doesn’t do anything but make them hate _you?_ ” she yelled with a dramatic roll of her eyes.

He kicked her out of the house, telling her that if she couldn’t support him then maybe it was time for their paths to diverge.  She stood in the driveway shouting, “You’re such a goddamn _drama queen!_ ” before slamming her car door and driving back to the campus.

—-

The truth was, Marian was scared.  She was scared for Andy and she was scared for herself, and she didn’t know how much she could get caught up in his cause before they got in serious trouble.  She didn’t want to end up in jail, or, worse, in one of their institutions.  Any doubts she had about what they were up to had been erased when she saw Karl.  That shit just wasn’t normal.

So she was smoking more and drinking more and spending more time in her dorm room writing and listening to punk rock and hating Andy and missing Andy.

And then one day he showed up at her door, a battered notebook clutched in his hand.  “I’ve been writing down my arguments.  I want you to read them.”  He handed her the notebook and she flipped through it.  Pages and pages and pages filled with his scrawl.  Bulleted lists, underlined passages.

“You need to get out more,” she said.  “Not sit cooped up in your attic writing your… _manifesto_.”

“I swear, I don’t know whether to kiss you or kill you,” he said.

In the end, he kissed her.

—-

“I don’t know what happened,” her mother sobbed.  “One day she’s calling me to say everything is fine, and the next day I have a letter from the treatment center saying it’s best for everyone if I don’t come see her anymore.  My baby!  They can’t just take her away!”

Marian sat with the phone cradled between her head and shoulder and fought the urge to be sick.

“I just didn’t want her to end up like Malcom,” her mother said between hiccups.  “But now I’ve lost them both.”

—-

She looked so very businesslike.  Flaming red hair cut short, carefully molded into something resembling a professional style.  Suit, heels, clipboard.  It all hid the fluttering in her stomach beautifully.  She had borrowed a friend’s car and hoped no one had her image on camera from their last foray near the center.

It wasn’t every day one got an exclusive interview with Templeton’s head of research.  Sure, she told everyone who asked that she was doing it for the school paper.  A little editorial to get them some exposure and explain just what they were doing out here.  Templeton’s Pharmaceuticals was earning quite the reputation, after all, and people had questions.

But that wasn’t the real reason.  She knew Andy was hopping the fence this very moment, duffel bag slung over his shoulder as he dodged security cameras and hopefully, _hopefully_ , didn’t get caught.

“Give them one more chance,” Andy had said.  “Let them realize that what they’re doing is wrong.”

So here she was, sitting in a sterile office across the desk from Dr. Elthina, Head of Research.  23 of their 30 allotted minutes had already passed, during which Marian had peppered the doctor with questions about their techniques, their research, their science.  If she had realized Marian’s constant glancing at the clock, she didn’t comment.  She answered every question concisely without giving the slightest hint of substance.

27 minutes in.  Three to go.

“Dr. Elthina, I must ask.  You don’t find keeping subjects locked away from their families a little… unethical?”

Really, that was the least unethical thing they were doing, and they both knew it.  But the doctor only pursed her lips, shook her head, and showed Marian to the door.

She got in the car and drove to the little side street down the road.  She slowed, stopped, and waited.  After a few moments, Andy emerged from the thicket of trees.  He got into the car and threw the empty duffel bag into the back seat.  “What did she say?”

“Nothing to change our minds.”

—-

Thursday evening, the last night before the rest of their lives.  They sat on the roof, huddled together under a blanket for protection from the chilly night air, and smoked and drank whiskey and talked and planned and re-planned.

“You know, we should have code names or something,” Marian slurred, just a little.

Andy arched one of those perfect expressive eyebrows.  “Code names?”

“Yeah!”  Marian sat up and swayed a little as she squinted at him.  “We don’t want people to know it’s us.  We could get in trouble.”  She whispered the last part, like it was a precious secret.  Andy laughed at her and she swatted his chest.  “I’m serious!  Hmm.  You should be… hmm.  An… an… Anders!”

“…Anders?”

“Anders!” she said just a little too loudly, pumping a fist in the air.  “And I’ll be… uh.  I’ll be… Hawk!”

“… _Hawk_?”

She took a swig from the whiskey bottle.  “Marian Amell.  I fucking hate that name.  I want something strong.  Like Hawk.”

Later that night, she growled _Anders_ into his ear, and when he came, deep inside her, the name Hawk was on his lips.

—-

They sat side by side on the ratty queen-sized motel mattress, watching the explosion replay over and over on the tiny color television on the dresser.  Her fingers were twisted in the sheets so hard that they ached.  His hand came to rest over hers.

“We did the right thing,” he said.

She looked at him.  “I know.”

“They’ll be looking for us.”

“I know.”

“We can’t stop until it’s over.”

“I know.”

—-

Ultimately, Hawk and Anders went down fighting.

 _Terrorists_ , they were called.  It was silly, really, Marian thought.  Sure they killed a few people, but their cause was just.  They were doing it for everyone.  For freedom.  For justice.

She hadn’t realized how ferocious they had become.  Wire a few explosives and suddenly tearing a guy’s ear off with your teeth to try to escape his iron grip around your waist was nothing.  She supposed she should have been grateful they didn’t pull their guns, but damn those nightsticks hurt.  The way her breath came out in wheezy gasps led her to believe there were a couple of broken ribs in there, too.

Anders was passed out in the seat next to her, head lolling against the window of the cop car.  He looked awful.  Black eye, spattered in blood - his, and not his - a bright crimson line trailing from his nose to his chin.  She wondered if she looked as bad.

They were shepherded into the police station without ceremony or any kind of gentility.  Fully armed guards pushed them up against the wall and shoved placards into their hands.

“Smile for the camera,” one of them sneered.

Then he was being pulled away from her, across the room, into the hallway, away, away.  There was a moment, just a moment, left.  Their eyes met, and she told herself she wouldn’t cry.  “I love you,” he said, and then he was gone, and she was alone.


End file.
